Advance Play Design Week 9
Theme: Play and Rule
A 2D platform action game.
Context:
Games always have many rules, but very few game let the player to decide the rules. I think all of this kind of games are very fun, such as Baba Is You and Quantum Conundrum. But this kind of games are always puzzle solving game. Although I like puzzle solving games very much, I want to try different type of games with player can change rules feature. As a result, I desided to make one myself. I thought about which kind of game can combine this feature well and not hard to develop at the meanwhile, and I decided to make a 2D platform game.
Method:
Unity 2020.1.0b1
Response:
This time I thought about many rules that I can use for the player to control, but I can not decide which ones I should use. So I go to search for asset bundles at first. Then I found this bundle which contains woods and leaves that can combine together, it makes me thought about swith between can/cannot stand on leaves and woods, that lead to the rule number 4 and 6 I used in my game.
I decided that the game should be control by both hand because it is a action game, the control should be in realtime. So I want to use the num pad on the keyboard for the player, and it lead to the rules should be in total of 9. I let rules number 1,2,3 and 5 to switch between the player can/cannot control the character which I was decided before. Then after I finished the tall tree part, I found that the player can climb very high, so I decided the gravity rule (one of the rules I have thought about) will be appropriate.
Reflection:
I failed at level design this time cause I give the player too much possiblities by let the player decide even is the gravity exist or not, it makes the level design really hard if I want to make the game hard to play. I have thought about calculate the score when the player reach the goal and record it, the score is depend on the time taken and how long does the player is using each rules. But I realized that some rules not always help or not help the player to pass the level, like the can through/can not through rules of leaves and woods. It's not fair to give more score if the leaves can through, cause both can/can not state will help the player in different ways. So I also gave up this idea. Finally I compromised and designed a simple level that the player can pass easily, it lead to many rules I designed are meaningless, such as can/cannot go left/right rules, player can pass the level without using them. Again, I realized how hard level design is, maybe I should design both level and game mechanics at the same time to make sure they cooperate well.
For the last 2 rule (num pad 7 and 9), I didn't find good ones, so I just leave it there because this game is experimental, just for show my context, no need to be perfect. It might be better to leave some possibilities that I am able to add new rules when I have new insprations.
Key Binding:
W, A or Arrow keys to move left and right
W or Up Arrow to jump, press when you are in the air to double jump
Number Pad 1 to switch can/cannot go left
Number Pad 3 to switch can/cannot go right
Number Pad 2 to switch can/cannot jump
Number Pad 5 to switch can/cannot double jump
Number Pad 4 to switch can/cannot go through leaves
Number Pad 6 to switch can/cannot go through woods
Number Pad 8 to switch On/Off of gravity (Available After pick up the item)
R to play again
Esc to quit the game
Reference:
Download:
The folders are too big to upload so I upload them to my goodle drive.
By Deno Zhang
Email Deno Zhang
Published On: 12/05/2020